Thailand tourist islands flood in deadly rains Skip to main content

Thailand tourist islands flood in deadly rains

Thailand"s southern city of Narathiwat on March 29, 2011 Unseasonal cold and heavy rains have swept through the south of the country

Related Stories

Flooding across the south of Thailand has killed at least 11 people and stranded thousands of tourists.
Police told the BBC that landslides in Krabi have killed two people and left at least 20 people missing.
The airport on the tourist island of Samui has been closed. Koh Tao has also become inaccessible due to heavy seas.
The Thai navy has sent its only aircraft carrier to the area to help rescue people stranded by the unseasonal cold and rain.
Unusual weather in what should be a hot season has seen rainstorms drenching the towns in most of 14 southern provinces.
The provinces of Chumphon, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Surat Thani, Trang, Krabi and Phatthalung have been the hardest hit. Rising floodwaters have hampered relief efforts.
Officials in Krabi said they are checking reports that landslides have buried several villages.
Tourists stuck Air travel, road and rail links have been flooded and electricity cut to many areas.
"There are roughly one million people affected in many provinces. At first we thought the flood would last a day or two, but now it has already been one week," deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban told reporters.
With the closure of the Koh Samui airport, Bangkok Airways said about 2,000 mostly foreign tourists were stranded on the island.
Another 800 stuck in Bangkok had been hoping to go to the island for a holiday, before 50 flights were grounded this week.
One tourist, Lucy Pennington from London, said on Twitter that Railay Beach, in Krabi province, was inundated with water.
"Holiday turning into nightmare. Escaped Railay today, everywhere flooding and I don't know how to get to Bangkok," she said.
Most of the deaths so far have occurred in Nakhon Si Thammarat province. A total of 80 districts of eight provinces have been declared disaster areas.
Floods late last year in the south of Thailand left more than 200 people dead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12903505

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Chronology of the Press in Burma

1836 – 1846 * During this period the first English-language newspaper was launched under British-ruled Tenasserim, southern  Burma . The first ethnic Karen-language and Burmese-language newspapers also appear in this period.     March 3, 1836 —The first English-language newspaper,  The Maulmain Chronicle , appears in the city of Moulmein in British-ruled Tenasserim. The paper, first published by a British official named E.A. Blundell, continued up until the 1950s. September 1842 —Tavoy’s  Hsa-tu-gaw  (the  Morning Star ), a monthly publication in the Karen-language of  Sgaw ,  is established by the Baptist mission. It is the first ethnic language newspaper. Circulation reached about three hundred until its publication ceased in 1849. January 1843 —The Baptist mission publishes a monthly newspaper, the Christian  Dhamma  Thadinsa  (the  Religious Herald ), in Moulmein. Supposedly the first Burmese-language newspaper, it continued up until the first year of the second Angl

ARSA claims ambush on Myanmar security forces

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on Sunday claimed responsibility for an ambush on Myanmar security forces that left several wounded in northern Rakhine state, the first attack in weeks in a region gutted by violence. Rakhine was plunged into turmoil last August, when a series of ARSA raids prompted a military backlash so brutal the UN says it likely amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya minority. The army campaign sent some 650,000 Rohingya fleeing for Bangladesh, where refugees have given harrowing accounts of rape, murder and arson at the hands of security forces and vigilantes. Myanmar's military, which tightly controls information about Rakhine, denies any abuses and insists the crackdown was a proportionate response to crush the "terrorist" threat. ARSA have launched few attacks in recent months.  But the army reported that "about ten" Rohingya terrorists ambushed a car with hand-made mines and gunfire on Friday morning

Thai penis whitening trend raises eyebrows

Image copyright LELUXHOSPITAL Image caption Authorities warn the procedure could be quite painful A supposed trend of penis whitening has captivated Thailand in recent days and left it asking if the country's beauty industry is taking things too far. Skin whitening is nothing new in many Asian countries, where darker skin is often associated with outdoor labour, therefore, being poorer. But even so, when a clip of a clinic's latest intriguing procedure was posted online, it quickly went viral. Thailand's health ministry has since issued a warning over the procedure. The BBC Thai service spoke to one patient who had undergone the treatment, who told them: "I wanted to feel more confident in my swimming briefs". The 30-year-old said his first session of several was two months ago, and he had since seen a definite change in the shade. 'What for?' The original Facebook post from the clinic offering the treatment, which uses lasers to break do